Abstract-As multimedia applications proliferate, there is a desire to provide wireless transport to information streams with inherently different data rates. Direct-sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) is a natural multiple-access strategy for multiple data-rate systems. Recent work on multirate DS-CDMA receivers has focused on signal-processing techniques, which detect all users of all rates simultaneously. In the current work, multirate users have multiple bandwidths. Thus, it is proposed to exploit bandwidth differences to achieve frequencybased rate separation followed by single-rate detection schemes. Such a methodology enables a tradeoff between receiver complexity and performance. The performance of the proposed filters and receivers are derived for both a modified matched filter and modified decorrelator employing rate separation. Performance of a multirate CDMA overlay system is evaluated. In addition, chip pulse shaping for wide-band users is developed to improve performance for narrow-band users for the overlay system. Index Terms-Direct signal code division multiple access (DS-CDMA), multimedia services, multirate systems, multiuser detection, overlay systems, pulse shaping, variable chipping rate CDMA, Wiener filters.